The first time I encountered Harry Potter was around the turn of the millennium. I was on an airplane and couldn’t believe my eyes when a grown woman beside me pulled out what appeared to be a children’s book and barely looked up from its pages for the rest of the transatlantic flight.
After that, each new title was greeted by long queues of both adults and children snaking around bookshops overnight, followed by shelves filled with the charming volumes in supermarkets.
Three decades, 600 million sales, eight blockbuster films, seven flagship shops, four theme parks and a multi-billion-dollar franchise later, the boy wizard from Little Whinging has played a major role in my life, mainly through my children.
My oldest daughter grew up as much in the Potterverse as she did in the real world, reading the entire collection – about 4,000 pages in all – seven times, and saving the films until she completed each one. She had the cloak, the hat, the wand and even a book of spells.
Her siblings were also keen. So under normal circumstances, my family would be as delighted as the rest of Britain at the brand-new HBO TV adaptation, due to be released on Christmas Day. The plan is to completely reshoot the series with a new cast over the coming years.
Only we can no longer bring ourselves to watch it. To understand how the magic was ruined, one need look no further than Nicholas Hoult withdrawing from the part of the flamboyant fraud Gilderoy Lockhart, ostensibly owing to a scheduling clash.
Happily, he has been replaced by the excellent Kit Harington (Jon Snow in Game Of Thrones).
John Lithgow, who is Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore in the series, has agonised publicly over taking the part
Nick Frost who plays Hagrid declared that his views and those of the author ‘don’t align in any way’
Hoult’s departure came after a major online backlash from the actor’s fans over his decision to take the role.
Typical was a comment by a fan account named Hoult-Daily, which said on X: ‘Nicholas Hoult do better, so many of your fans are hurt.’
Another declared that his decision to join the production was ‘disappointing’ and ‘anti-LGBT’.
The furore is over JK Rowling’s controversial views, which include – shock horror – that the only humans with penises are men, and that those born male who say they are female should be prevented from sharing single-sex bathrooms, prisons and refuges with biological women.
That’s right: what used to be called common sense – and a view still held by most Britons – is now so toxic to the luvvie class that they are trashing a much-loved literary creation with their own cultural politics.
Did the gender row drive Hoult’s decision to withdraw? He would hardly be the first industry figure to distance themselves from the series for which JK Rowling is an executive producer.
When Black Mirror director Ally Pankiw was asked if she’d be interested in working on the series, she responded: ‘Absolutely f*****g not!’ She added later that ‘it simply is this easy to say no to funding transphobia’.
Kate Herron, who directed the first series of Disney’s Loki starring Tom Hiddleston, bragged that she’d been approached ‘twice’ and ‘had to explain my answer is never going to change from a “no”‘.
The two shared these messages in public and engaged in a sort of love-in online.
Clearly, they feel that getting involved with Harry Potter comes with a personal and professional cost, while trumpeting your opposition to the fantasy franchise in public wins huge adulation among the denizens of la-la land.
Indeed, the pro-trans mob – which can muster eye-popping levels of intolerance in the name of tolerance – is orchestrating a campaign against the upcoming series.
In January, radical group Defund Transphobes protested outside a performance of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child at London’s Palace Theatre, while pro-trans Reddit message boards are saturated with activists pledging to boycott the new series.
What I find extraordinary is that actors and actresses who have taken leading roles have still chosen to speak out against the woman who created Harry Potter.
3rd Rock From The Sun’s John Lithgow, who is Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore in the series, has agonised publicly over taking the part.
‘I find it ironic and somewhat inexplicable that Rowling has expressed such views,’ he declared loftily, adding that the backlash to his decision to join the series ‘upsets me’.
Other actors, including Bel Powley (due to play the Muggle Petunia Dursley), Nick Frost (half-giant Hagrid) and Paapa Essiedu (complex baddie Snape), have assumed the bizarre position of publicly distancing themselves from Rowling’s stance on gender while continuing to bring her fictional world alive.
‘I think that the trans community deserve safety and dignity and respect,’ preened Powley this month.
Frost declared that ‘she [JK Rowling] is allowed her opinion, and I’m allowed mine. They just don’t align in any way’. Meanwhile, Essiedu signed an open letter declaring he stood ‘in solidarity with the trans, non-binary and intersex communities…’
Paapa Essiedu, who plays Snape, signed an open letter declaring he stood ‘in solidarity with the trans, non-binary and intersex communities’
The author has responded with generosity. ‘I don’t have the power to sack an actor from the series, and I wouldn’t exercise it if I did,’ she has said of Essiedu.
‘I don’t believe in taking away people’s jobs or livelihoods because they hold legally protected beliefs that differ from mine.’
But then, Rowling has become accustomed to her own actors biting the hand that feeds them.
The stars of the original films, Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), who were gifted global fame and fortune through the power of Rowling’s imagination, repaid her with a venomous campaign against her good sense.
In 2022, Watson made a dig at Rowling during a Bafta ceremony – ‘I’m here for all the witches’, she famously declared, a remark universally interpreted as a statement of support for the trans community – while the author was, by her own account, receiving death and rape threats.
Radcliffe responded to Rowling’s stance on transgender by saying: ‘Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional healthcare associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo [Rowling] or I.’
Grint, set to reprise his role as Ron Weasley on stage in New York next year, also made clear his position in a statement that he ‘firmly stands with the transgender community’.
He later wrote supportively of Rowling: ‘I don’t necessarily agree with everything my “auntie” says but she’s still my “auntie”.’
At least the original trio had signed up for the roles before the controversy erupted, I suppose. For the new crop, there can be no such excuse. But such is the bubble in which these people exist that they are unlikely ever to see their own posturing for what it is.
What is most remarkable about the arts these days is its drab uniformity of opinion. Almost everybody seems to support the latest trendy causes, from Gaza to trans rights. Do none of them think for themselves? If they do, they seem to keep quiet.
Small wonder, perhaps: last month, when Boy George released We Will Dance Again, a song supportive of the Middle East’s only democracy in its war against jihadism, he was roundly condemned and forced to withdraw from his role in Jesus Christ Superstar at The London Palladium. How many performers have the courage to face such a backlash?
With so much online bile poured on to Rowling, how many would even dare pull out a Harry Potter book on an airplane today for fear of social opprobrium?
As for the new TV series, populated by stars who felt they just had to tell us their views on transgender rights, well, I think my family will stick to the books.
